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Conservatives and racism

Rod Dreher gives voice to an understandable opinion, this in his continuing discussion of shitholes, domestic and foreign.

It really ticks me off how many (but not all) liberals insist on inserting race into these discussions and calling conservatives racist (or at least implying that we are racially insensitive). As if people of all races and classes are not capable of living virtuously, and to believe that they are is a sign of bigotry.

What Dreher appears to be seeking is a middle ground, one that is difficult to get at (or more properly, to hear). Is there a center right view on race that can be heard, or must it all devolve into thinly veiled contempt?

Let’s just say the conservative political class does not make it easy.

At both the national and certainly at the state level, this is a group that at its best comes across as indifferent, or silent all the while framing policies questions with “dog whistles.” At worst, of course, this class doesn’t advance the dog whistle legislation, but something worse, something that can be seen as actually harming minorities. Our state house dockets are filled with both approaches. So really, one cannot blame those outside from looking and wondering if in fact this political class actually sees minorities.

And what is the alternative? The left often offers a politics of performing, of posturing — a reaction noted by Sam Murrell. The twin posturing can easily become a sort of shadow dance, where real the performance (or the glee of not recognizing) mirror each other, in a word, a profoundly white conversation. What goes missing between these two political posturings are the voices of conservative and middle of the road blacks. It’s not that there exists a valid conservative take on the problems of race, but rather that it so rarely gets heard amid the noise. This productive middle gets obscured, or pigeon-holed, or dismissed.This is the class that goes to church, the educators and entrepreneurs, a natural conservative class and yet the political conservatives? Too rarely do they cross the line to engage, or to let these voices impact theirs. Too often they choose their own rhetoric, drop the ball, and too often, prove unreliable.